After four days with good friends, good weather, and good theater Queen Mab twirled my emotions like a MMA wrestler bends an elbow joint. I've been tied into knots of sublime vision, mysterious melancholy, phantasmagoric reprise, unbridled joy, deep sorrow, much appreciation, and just a titch of magic. And just as a curtain closes, our week's adventure was done. But that is, I think, the true purpose of life: Just live it. Life is not something to travel through preparing for the right moment, the right career, the right person, the right thinking. No. Life is now, and what fun to spend a week among friends sharing moments of now, moments that cannot be repeated or replaced. One of the actors in a post performance discussion we attended made the comment that plays breathe. They're immediate connections, connections that exist as they are between actors and the words, actors and other actors, and actors with the audience. They are moments that can never be remade. I thought, "How many of us miss this? How many of us carry a basket of regrets in a bag slung over our shoulder, hoping evermore to relive, repent, reclaim, or renounce our former decisions. We can't. We can only subscribe to two words: over and next. The past is over. What's next is where the hope lies. Now is where life is, so don't worry, be happy, or better yet, if you don't like your world, change it. I told you Queen Mab had me twirling, but such is the effect of the wondrous time we just spent in Ashalnd. Make the journey if you can. We saw six plays in three days. Five were fabulous; one was convoluted, but all left us floating above the fray, dancing as it were in the realm of possibility. The last, Romeo and Juliet moved me to tears. It's a play I know nearly word for word since I taught it many times in my career. But it stuck me at the end when the futility of sorrow filled the hearts of everyone that maybe Shakespeare has constructed a larger metaphor. Maybe the sadness is not of spoiled loved, but a sadness even greater, a sadness born of preventable misfortune. How many of us bring our own sorrow to bear each day. We carry it like expectation. We promote it like a Vegas street hawker. But need we expect such sadness? I think not. To be sure, there are real times when we must bear sadness. Times of unexpected loss, times of tragedy, times of woeful injustice, times of despair, but nowhere is it written that I must expect sorrow. Nay! Leave that insanity to Queen Mab. Instead, rejoice and merrily say, "Life is good, especially today."
We drove all the way home today: eleven hours (Traveling mercy was upon us) to find yet more stunning beauty in the natural world: My Bunny's garden.
The Iris' hold to their last blooms while the roses begin their precious run.
We've often sacrificed the experience of enjoying "rose season" because we choose to travel when they push their beauteous faces out to the world. It's nice to witness their blush.
Lettuce, spinach, and kale, Oh, My!
Alas, my poor, dear Eagle, a sheared cleat is all that remains of you.
Two firings already this summer. More pizza pies on the way!
And the climbers will give truth to my iron "privacy screen".
First stop after the long ride home. the "tub" where I sit often contented as Buddha.
No comments:
Post a Comment